In a nutshell
The Problem
Print heavy environments like Architecture & Design schools possess unique challenges that are unaccounted for in the printing space, be it in in-house printing services or external print shops that serve such Individuals.
Design Opportunity
How might we empower students to make informed decisions to ensure timely submissions while streamlining and optimizing various processes involved for a printing service to maximize productivity and profitability?
The Solution
A print management service that provides essential tools to those seeking printing services to make informed decisions and obtain timely prints while boosting the overall efficiency and functioning of the printing space for retailers.
30 students crowding around 4 printers, anxiously waiting to collect their A1 size printouts for a submission that is due in 20 minutes. Each A1 sheet takes 3-5 whole minutes to print. Another 5 are arguing among themselves for the coveted first place for giving the print command. In this utterly chaotic environment, the Librarian struggles to maintain decorum, but to no avail. 12 of them ended up with a late remark and lost attendance for that lecture that day.
In both cases, the entire journey of obtaining a printout consisted of multiple, repetitive steps.
30 students crowding around 4 printers, anxiously waiting to collect their A1 size printouts for a submission that is due in 20 minutes. Each A1 sheet takes 3-5 whole minutes to print. Another 5 are arguing among themselves for the coveted first place for giving the print command. In this utterly chaotic environment, the Librarian struggles to maintain decorum, but to no avail. 12 of them ended up with a late remark and lost attendance for that lecture that day.
Almost all Architecture & Design school students rely heavily on printouts as they are not only used for submissions, but in almost all lectures for various discussions and critiques.
Timetable of an architecture school
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User Research 1
Students
I began my research with an objective to find answers to the following questions:
By charting each step alongside the user's level of frustration or fulfillment, I identified critical points in the journey that demanded significant attention and intervention to enhance the process.
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Takeaways
A user specifies multiple details pertaining to his printout via email or calls to the print shop employee. This same information has to be inputted again in the system by the employee while giving the print command.
The responsibility to perform the ultimate action of giving a print command was not executed by the customer but by the employee of the shop.
This occurred in Case 2, and made the customer nervous as they were NOT the initiating authority and needed to rely on someone else.
Students were extremely concerned about the potential long queues and wanted the best output as quickly as possible with minimum expenditure.
In case 2, Students were forced to take their best guess regarding which shop had the least crowd before sending their print files to a particular shop and hope for the best.
User Research 2
Shop Employees & Managers
Key Learning
In most cases, press productivity in the average print environment is between 20-40%. A large part of the potential isn’t being utilized. Improving productivity by around 20% lays the basis for increasing profits by around 50%.
6 strategies to direct future growth:
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Takeaways
When printing jobs increased exorbitantly, shop owners increased manpower to cope with the load.
These services are in high demand during specific hours and at a plateau during the rest of the day. Increasing manpower was a short term solution that was momentary and did not address the long standing problem.
For 3/4 owners, scaling up the business & enhancing their service meant investing in printers with greater speeds and better outputs.
All the interviewed individuals kept manual book records of inventory and did not utilize the collected data to direct future investment in the business
To Summarize
The root cause of the problem lay in the inability of students to predict the waiting time to obtain a print, leading to uninformed decisions based on guess work and probability.
Individuals responsible for running the printing service relied heavily on traditional and manual methods of operation that ultimately led to inefficiencies, slowdowns and a lesser output. These problems got magnified during peak hours
Design Opportunity
How might we optimize processes in printing environments to empower students to obtain quality printouts in a timely manner.
Ideation
After arriving at a statement I was happy with, I moved on to the ideation phase. At this point, I believed I had a good understanding of the functioning and role of each stakeholder. I did a storyboarding session with these individuals to validate what I had in mind.
